Empire Potential in the upper right of the research window, showing the total amount of researchers in your empire to research stuff. Potential Output of research is the first number below the research window. These are the free places of research in your build station, sorted by research type. Their sum should never be above the amount of researchers you got. The second row below your window shows your actual research output through your scientists. This number includes the %amount of the research potential the lab kind takes and the applied bonuses.

How does the final output get calculated?

First of all it will be your potential multiplied with the bonuses in a chain multiplication. If you got three boni of +25% +10% +15% and -20% it will be:

Y x 1.25 x 1.1 x 1.15 x 0.8 = X

If you already hit your research capacity and got more modules then possible the defined basic amount is the % of your labs. For example you got a potential of 720 and got 280 in weapons, 360 in energy and 270 in high tech. Your total amount now adds up to 910. Therefore your real basic research in the weapons area would be:

Thanks for this! It was still on my list to look into research myself - now i can just play the game. The chain multiply is quite counterintuitive. I thought one has to add up all percentage bonuses. Good this is clarified now.

The big parts are true in game. The rest is nonsense. I explained somewhere before that negative boni/mali are weaker than positive ones. Your statistical "drop" in the first row results in the same fact.

If your money account gets interest, the interest will be calculated together with it. That wil lincrease the boni every time. If you steal 40% from Bill Gates or Erik Rutkins you know which coup yields more money. If you divide a cake again and again you don't get zero.

Especially the last part made the decision for the chain multiplication instead of an boni/mali addition. Otherwise some things like maintenance or war weariness could become zero. That is NOT intended... or healthy. There are side effects, but as in most things - and reality - if you could get a big negative and a big positive to annul themselves, most of the times the people still see the negative. Therefore the drop. Complaining is easier...

The empire potential is calculated by population and culture as far as I know. Just increase both.

Case: My empire potential research is 900. Actual research output in all three research fields are 400, so a total of 1200.

Option 1 (how I understood the text above): my "Really Actual research output" on all research fields are reduced (without showing me anywhere) from 400 to 300 so the total of all three fields equal my potential of 900.

Option 2 (How i up untill now thought it was working): I would try to build enough research stations so I get 900 actual output on all tree fields - a total of 2700.

Oh! So the Potential (little red field top right in the Labs screen) is for ALL THREE? So this potential is split up over all 3 equally? So that if my potential is 600, and I have, say, 5 weapons labs for 1000, 1 energy lab for 200, and 2 hi-tech labs for 500, I will be doing actual 300 weapons, 200 energy, and 300 hi-tech? Or would I be doing 600 weapons, 200 energy, and 500 hi-tech? (Or something different?) thank you

So - the way this works (and please stop me if I am wrong here): If I am at my potential, and find a really good high-tech spot, then building there would increase research in high-tech but also reduce research in energy and weapons.

This changes everything.

And is it potential lab output or actual output that is limited by the empire potential?

- Ideally, you need to keep your total number of potential output (the gross number before any bonuses or penalties, e.g. the raw base output potential of the sum of your "labs") to be exactly equal to your empire potential (the red number in the top right)? And assuming you want to research with equal speed in all three areas, your total gross potential in each area should be exactly 1/3 of that red number? If you have any less, you are not utilizing your potential. If you have any more, you have empty labs. In other words, if my empire has a potential of 1200, and I want to research equally, I should have 400 in energy, 400 in HT, and 400 in weapons labs before bonuses or penalties. Any more, and I am merely paying upkeep. If I then build a weapons research station with 4 labs at 50 each at a location giving me a bonus of +50%, I would have 400 / 400 / 600, and increase my net weapons research by a bit, but I would also reduce my HT and energy research. Right? (So this also means that once your research potential has been decked by your labs, you can stop building those default designed spaceports with labs in them, because those won't be doing anything anymore, right?)

Mmm, not sure to get the point : in the last example, going from 400/400/400 to 400/400/600 does NOT decrease anything, it's just that the last field (weapon) has increased and not the others... What still puzzles me is how is the potential managed vs available labs : suppose I have 1000 potential and 100/300/10000 labs , what is the research output (before bonuses)? I have less than 1/3rd of potential in 1 fields, near 1/3 in the second, and much more in the 3rd, but the total lab capacity is over the potential...how is that split ?

Ok, got it now, thanks ! To sum it up, the potential is spread between the 3 areas in the same proportions that the lab capacities, then bonuses are applied. I misread the 400 to 600 example, thinking the +200 was from a scientist bonus, not an additional lab too (which changes the proportions).

Anyway, the game info on the screen is pretty poor, and badly presented..

Thanks for the info. I think I understand how this works with the potential cap but I am not clear on bonuses. If I understand this correctly you can never produce more research than your potential and all bonuses are taken into account before being applied to the potential cap. So, if I am already at my potential without any bonuses then are the bonuses completely wasted or do the bonuses add to the potential or maybe they are taken on top of the potential somehow? This would make races with research bonuses as well as black holes etc useless. I must be confused because that just does not make since.

The potential for research is divided with the formula Nedrear posted and then all those bonuses are counted in. From what I've observed research potential is a function of empire's strategic value and nothing else is taken into account when calculating it (except perhaps the government bonus but I'm not 100% sure on that, perhaps Nedrear can clarify that). I may be wrong about this so I'll be really happy if someone corrects me.

Goodness gracious this game is complex!!! Sorry I'm late to the party but does my actual research output depend on having a Scientist in every lab or does the Scientist only effect the lab he/she is at?

Goodness gracious this game is complex!!! Sorry I'm late to the party but does my actual research output depend on having a Scientist in every lab or does the Scientist only effect the lab he/she is at?

It depends Wild_Bill. A scientist character (Or more than one)could have the 'Ultra Genius' trait. If so, then ALL of the research output of that scientist's empire is increased in each of the areas that the scientist has a rating in. So if you get a scientist that has a rating in all of the categories of Weapons, Energy and High Tech, then your empires' total research output in each area will be increased by the related percentage.

If you don't have any scientists, you get the research output of the total combined labs in all of your locations, plus any research related percentage increase or decrease that your empire's Leader character may possess. In my experience, at times it pays to have your best overall rated scientist stationed at your Homeworld's Spaceport if its design has labs. But then in other cases, if a scientist character is generated that has a high rating in, let's say weapons, you may want to locate that scientist at a Black Hole or Nova/Super Nova which has a weapons research bonus. There are quite a few scenarios that can occur. Hope this helps!

I'm confused by the 'adjusted research potential' on the wiki. I don't think that's right.

Anyway, I've done some calcs, and here 'tis.

because the total research of 80+80+80(spaceport)+120(research station)=360 which is less than the research potential of 583, the calc is fairly easy. You simply use the total research for each field, and multiply by bonuses.

In my last game I kept finding bonus spots to build weapons research platforms. By mid game I had 5. So should I have not built the extras since I only had 1 hi-tech and 1 construction research centers? (as I didn't want hi-tech research to slow). I like complex games, but I don't understand why this research function seems needlessly obtuse.